"She hasn't tried to escape, though. A lot of talk and no action. Once the guns come up, she backs right down. "
I recoiled.
"My guess is, she wants to live pretty dang bad," Jeb murmured to himself.
"Are you sure this is the. . . safest place to keep her?" I asked as we started down the black, twisting tunnel.
Jeb chuckled. "You didn't find your way out," he reminded me. "Sometimes the best hiding place is the one that's in plain sight. "
My answer was flat. "She's more motivated than I was. "
"The boys're keepin' a sharp eye on her. Nothin' to worry about. "
We were almost there. The tunnel turned back on itself in a sharp V.
How many times had I rounded this corner, my hand tracing along the inside of the pointed switchback, just like this? I'd never traced along the outside wall. It was uneven, with jutting rocks that would leave bruises and cause me to trip. Staying on the inside was a shorter walk anyway.
When they'd first showed me that the V was not a V but a Y-two branches forking off from another tunnel, the tunnel-I'd felt pretty stupid. Like Jeb said, hiding things in plain sight was sometimes the cleverest route. The times I'd been desperate enough to even consider escaping the caves, my mind had skipped right over this place in my speculations. This was the hole, the prison. In my head, it was the darkest, deepest well in the caves. This was where they'd buried me.
Even Mel, sneakier than I was, had never dreamed that they'd held me captive just a few paces from the exit.
It wasn't even the only exit. But the other was small and tight, a crawl space. I hadn't found that one because I'd walked into these caves standing upright. I hadn't been looking for that kind of tunnel. Besides, I'd never explored the edges of Doc's hospital; I'd avoided it from the beginning.
The voice, familiar even though it seemed part of another life, interrupted my thoughts.
"I wonder how you're still alive, eating like this. Ugh!"
Something plastic clattered against the rocks.
I could see the blue light as we rounded the last corner.
"I didn't know humans had the patience to starve someone to death. That seems like too complex a plan for you shortsighted creatures to grasp. "
Jeb chuckled. "Gotta say, I'm impressed with those boys. Surprised they held up this long. "
We turned into the lit dead-end tunnel. Brandt and Aaron, both sitting as far as possible from the end of the tunnel where the Seeker paced, both with guns in their hands, sighed with relief when they saw us approaching.
"Finally," Brandt muttered. His face was etched in hard lines of grief.
The Seeker halted in her pacing.
I was surprised to see the conditions she was kept in.
She was not stuffed into the tiny cramped hole, but comparatively free, stomping to and fro across the short width of the tunnel. On the floor, against the flat end of the tunnel, were a mat and a pillow. A plastic tray was tilted at an angle against the wall at about the midpoint of the cave; a few jicama roots lay scattered near it with a soup bowl. A little soup was splattered out from where that lay. This explained the clatter I'd just heard-she'd thrown her food. It looked as though she'd eaten most of it first, though.
I stared at this relatively humane setup and felt an odd pain in my stomach.
Who did we kill? Melanie muttered sullenly. This stung her, too.
"You want a minute with her?" Brandt asked me, and the pain stabbed again. Had Brandt ever referred to me using a feminine pronoun? I wasn't surprised that Jeb had done this for the Seeker, but everyone else?
"Yes," I whispered.
"Careful," Aaron cautioned. "She's an angry little thing. "
I nodded.
The others stayed where they were. I walked down the tunnel alone.
It was hard to lift my eyes, to meet the gaze that I could feel like cold fingers pressing against my face.
The Seeker was glaring at me, a harsh sneer twisting her features. I'd never seen a soul use that expression before.
"Well, hello there, Melanie," she mocked me. "What took you so long to come visit?"
I didn't answer. I walked toward her slowly, trying hard to believe that the hate coursing through my body really did not belong to me.
"Did your little friends think I would talk to you? Spill all my secrets because you carry a gagged and lobotomized soul around in your head, reflecting through your eyes?" She laughed abrasively.
I stopped two long strides away from her, my body tensed to run. She made no aggressive move toward me, but I could not relax my muscles. This was not like meeting the Seeker on the highway-I didn't have the usual sensation of safety that I felt around the gentle others of my kind. Again, the strange conviction that she would live long after I was gone swept through me.
Don't be ridiculous. Ask her your questions. Have you come up with any?
"So, what do you want? Did you request permission to kill me personally, Melanie?" the Seeker hissed.
"They call me Wanda here," I said.
She flinched slightly when I opened my lips to speak, as if expecting me to shout. My low, even voice seemed to upset her more than the scream she anticipated.
I examined her face while she glared at me with her bulging eyes. It was dirty, stained with purple dust and dried sweat. Other than that, there wasn't a mark on it. Again, this gave me an odd ache.
"Wanda," she repeated in a flat voice. "Well, what are you waiting for? Didn't they give you the okay? Were you planning to use your bare hands or my gun?"
"I'm not here to kill you. "
She smiled sourly. "To interrogate me, then? Where are your instruments of torture, human?"
I cringed. "I won't hurt you. "
Insecurity flickered across her face and then vanished behind her sneer. "What are they keeping me for, then? Do they think I can be tamed, like your pet soul?"
"No. They just. . . they didn't want to kill you until they had. . . consulted me. In case I wanted to talk to you first. "
Her lids lowered, narrowing her protruding eyes. "Do you have something to say?"
I swallowed. "I was wondering. . . " I only had the same question I'd been unable to answer for myself. "Why? Why couldn't you let me be dead, like the rest of them? Why were you so determined to hunt me down? I didn't want to hurt anyone. I just w
anted. . . to go my own way. "
She leaped up onto her toes, shoving her face toward mine. Someone moved behind me, but I couldn't hear more than that-she was shouting in my face.
"Because I was right!" she shrieked. "More than right! Look at them all! A vile nest of killers, lurking in wait! Just like I thought, only so much worse! I knew you were out here with them! One of them! I told them there was danger! I told them!"
She stopped, panting, and took a step back from me, staring over my shoulder. I didn't look away to see what had made her retreat. I assumed it had something to do with what Jeb had just told me-once the guns come up, she backs right down. I analyzed her expression for a moment as her heavy breathing slowed.
"But they didn't listen to you. So you came for us alone. "
The Seeker didn't answer. She took another step back from me, doubt twisting her expression. She looked oddly vulnerable for a second, as if my words had stripped away the shield she'd been hiding behind.
"They'll look for you, but in the end, they never believed you at all, did they?" I said, watching as each word was confirmed in her desperate eyes. It made me very sure. "So they won't take the search further than that. When they don't find you, their interest will fade. We'll be careful, as usual. They won't find us. "
Now I could see true fear in her eyes for the first time. The terrible-to her-knowledge that I was right. And I felt better for my nest of humans, my little family. I was right. They would be safe. Yet, incongruously, I didn't feel any better for myself.
I had no more questions for the Seeker. When I walked away, she would die. Would they wait until I was far enough not to hear the shot? Was there anywhere in the caves that was far enough for that?
I stared at her angry, fearful face, and I knew how deeply I hated her. How much I never wanted to see that face again for the rest of my lives.
The hate that made it impossible for me to allow her to die.
"I don't know how to save you," I whispered, too low for the humans to hear. Why did that sound like a lie in my ears? "I can't think of a way. "
"Why would you want to? You're one of them!" But a spasm of hope sparked in her eyes. Jeb was right. All the bluster, all the threats. . . She wanted very much to stay alive.
I nodded at her accusation, a little absently because I was thinking hard and fast. "But still me," I murmured. "I don't want. . . I don't want. . . "
How to finish that sentence? I didn't want. . . the Seeker to die? No. That wasn't true.
I didn't want. . . to hate the Seeker? To hate her so much that I wanted her to die. To have her die while I hated her. Almost as if she died because of my hate.
If I truly did not want her death, would I be able to think of a way to save her? Was it my hate that was blocking an answer? Would I be responsible if she died?
Are you insane? Melanie protested.
She'd killed my friend, shot him dead in the desert, broken Lily's heart. She'd put my family in danger. As long as she lived, she was a danger to them. To Ian, to Jamie, to Jared. She would do everything in her power to see them all dead.
That's more like it. Melanie approved of this train of thought.
But if she dies, and I could have saved her if I'd wanted to. . . who am I then?
You have to be practical, Wanda. This is a war. Whose side are you on?
You know the answer to that.
I do. And that's who you are, Wanda.
But. . . but what if I could do both? What if I could save her life and keep everyone here safe at the same time?
A heavy wave of nausea rolled in my stomach as I saw the answer I'd been trying to believe didn't exist.
The only wall I'd ever built between Melanie and me crumbled to dust.
No! Mel gasped. And then screamed, NO!
The answer I must have known I would find. The answer that explained my strange premonition.
Because I could save the Seeker. Of course I could. But it would cost me. A trade. What had Kyle said? A life for a life.
The Seeker stared at me, her dark eyes full of venom.